Royal capital of the northern kingdom of Israel until its destruction

Where? Northwest of Shekhem (Nablus)
When? First Temple, Roman period

And Ahab son of Omri ruled Israel in Samaria twenty-two years. (I Kings 16:29)

The city of Samaria was built by Omri as his new capital in roughly 877 BCE and served as the northern Israelite kingdom’s urban center until its destruction by the Assyrians in 722 BCE.

In Hoshea’s ninth year, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and carried Israel away into Assyria. (II Kings 17:6)

The kingdom was renamed Samaria, after the city where the local governor held court, and became first an Assyrian, then a Babylonian, and finally a Persian province. A century later, the city of Samaria vied for prominence with rebuilt Jerusalem, inhabited by returning Judean exiles.

The site was extensively excavated before the 1960s, revealing sections of an impressive royal complex built by successive kings of Israel. The massive hewn-stone construction yielded a fabulous collection of ivory panels, known as the Samaria ivories. Experts have sought to link these to Ahab’s House of Ivory (ibid. 22:39) and to the ivory couches denounced by the prophet Amos as typifying the decadence of the northern Israelite aristocracy:

Woe to those who are at ease in Zion and trust in Mount Samaria […], who lie on beds of ivory, stretch out on their couches, and eat lambs from the flock and calves out of the stall. (Amos 6:1, 4)

In 30 BCE, Augustus Caesar gifted Samaria to Herod as part of his Judean kingdom. Herod rebuilt the city, renaming it Sebaste, the Greek version of Augustus. Like many Roman towns, this one’s name has been appropriated by a neighboring Arab village of Sebastia.

Artifacts are still scattered around the site, which includes a large Roman theater.